China

China's ruling families

Torrent of scandal

AT HIS first news conference as China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao introduced himself to reporters packed into a cavernous room in the Great Hall of the People (as well as to a live television audience) with an unusual reference to his own family history. Chinese leaders normally hide behind the smokescreen of “collective leadership”, downplaying their own attributes. But Mr Wen waxed lyrical about his own upbringing: “I am a very ordinary person. I come from a family of teachers in the countryside. My grandfather, my father and my mother were all teachers. My childhood was spent in the turmoil of war. Our home was literally burnt down by the flame of war and so was the primary school, which my grandfather built with his own hands. The untold suffering in the days of old China left an indelible imprint on my tender mind.”

As a tour de force of investigative reporting by the New York Times now reveals, Mr Wen’s family circumstances have changed a lot since those days. It says that the prime minister’s relatives, including his wife, have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion. It notes that Mr Wen has “broad authority” over the major industries where his relatives have made their fortunes. Their business dealings have sometimes been hidden in ways that suggest the relatives are eager to avoid public scrutiny, says the report.

That family members of China’s most powerful politicians cash in on their connections comes as no surprise. Over the past two decades, as the country’s economy has ballooned, rumours and occasional bits of evidence of such behaviour have accumulated at a similar pace. In June Bloomberg shed remarkable light on the fortunes of relatives of Xi Jinping, the man who next month will be appointed general secretary of the Communist Party and, in March, president of China. Chinese officials were deeply unhappy with that report: Bloomberg’s entire website has been blocked in China ever since (as has the Analects story about the Bloomberg report). In the few hours since its exposé of Mr Wen’s family appeared, the New York Times’s website has been subjected to the same treatment (ironically, given Mr Wen’s avowed support for “people’s rights to stay informed about, participate in, express views on and oversee government affairs”: see his speech to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country’s legislature, in March).

Mr Wen and his fellow leaders would prefer any public attention to the business dealings of the powerful to be focused on the family of Bo Xilai, the former party chief of Chongqing region in the south-west. Coincidentally, just after publication of the New York Times story, it was announced that Mr Bo had been expelled from the NPC. This was hardly a shock given that he had already been stripped of every other title, including last month his membership of the party. It prepares the way, however, for Mr Bo to be put on trial (NPC membership confers a token immunity from prosecution). This event will likely be staged some time in the next few months and will be the most sensational of its kind involving a deposed Chinese leader since the trial of the “Gang of Four” in 1980. Managing news coverage of it will be a huge challenge to the “collective leadership”. It will want to convince the public that Mr Bo and family members were engaged in egregious corruption (not least in order to block any possibility of a political comeback by the ambitious Mr Bo). But it will not want gossip to spread about the business affairs of other ruling families (squirrelling money abroad appears a national pastime, as we explain in our China section this week).

The man all but certain to succeed Mr Wen next March, his deputy, Li Keqiang, will be among those squirming. In a powerful report just published, Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, has exposed the prominent role of Li Keqiang’s younger brother, Li Keming, in the tobacco industry—even as Li Keqiang has been overseeing reform of the health sector. Airing such conflicts of interest is taboo in the Chinese press.

Our cover this week calls Mr Xi “The man who must change China”. Revelations such as those by the New York Times, Bloomberg and Brookings strengthen the case for this. As we argue in a leader, Mr Xi needs to venture deep into political reform, including setting a timetable for the direct election of government leaders as Deng Xiaoping once suggested should be possible. Our Banyan column explains why Chinese-style “meritocracy” is not enough to prevent the kind of abuses of power that are rife in China today. And in a three-page briefing we look at how Mr Xi is being assailed from all sides by demands for far-reaching change.

well,fuck the nytimes.....the software I used to look through the foreign website(I'm living in china) were blocked just after tour de force of investigative reporting released.I‘just payed a toll several days ago for using the software.

I think your post might have a better chance at being read by the responsible authorities were you to repost it with a salutation "Comrades" and not with this Western nonsense of " dear sirs/madams"; it is just too bourgeois/civilized for some in that neck of the woods...

This is not the first passage that comments on China even I started reading The Economist just few days ago.IAs a Chinese, I have to admit that there are some problems in China, and some of them really need to be fixed quickly.
But we also have to admit the accomplishments that we Chinese people have achieved in just 30 years. We built the country, we developed the economy and, as a whole, we are still doing quite good for now.
What we need is time. we need time to be more developed, we need time to launch a revolution. We need time to get these bad things solved and at the same time to keep our country stable.
And for the other thing, PLEASE PLEASE don't compare China to the other countries. What does it mean by comparing Chine to Cuba and North Korea? Do you want to say that the other two countries are doing a better job than China? Okay then, Don't you know that there are still many people starving in these two countries? If you know how the life looks like, would you still think so?
All I want to say is that we just need more time, don't rush into any conclution upon your look for now and give advice to us and keep an eye on our development.

China does not have ruling Families. America has the Bush's,Clintons and Kennedy's. UK history is full of Chamberlain and Churchill surname. What happens is politically minded Fathers, produce politically active children.

In China, many officials have joined at the Student Level or Rural level and worked there way to the top. The CCP as part of training ensures you work in a rural province for some time. Its a meritocracy.
In the UK most politicians start careers as speech writters to ministers as special advisors straight out of University. Thats how Cameron and Milliband started.

and in America, they have more diverse backgrounds but the process is corrupted by Money. Where Speaker Boehner comes from a working class family but now advocates getting rid of an inheritance tax that only 0.3% of people pay.

The U.S. democracy is increasingly being influenced by capitalization and becoming a system for "master of money." Data issued by the U.S. Center for Responsive Politics in November 2011 show that 46 percent of the U.S. federal senators and members of the House of Representatives have personal assets of more than a million dollars. That well explains why U.S. administration' s plans to impose higher tax on the rich who earn more than one million dollars annually have been blocked in the Congress (www.finance-ol.com). As a commentary put it, money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court-recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests (Online edition of Time, January 20, 2011). According to a media report, nearly two thirds of all the contributions that the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee received during the 2010 election cycle came from industries regulated by his committee. A ranking Democrat Representative on the Agriculture Committee, who served as chairman between 2007 and 2010, saw a 711 percent increase in contributions from groups regulated by his committee and a 274 percent increase in contributions over all, in the same period (The New York Times, November 16, 2011). According to a Washington Post report on August 10, 2011, nearly eight in 10 of Americans polled were dissatisfied with the way the political system is working, with 45 percent saying they are very dissatisfied (The Washington Post, August 10, 2011).

The U.S. continued to violate the freedom of its citizens in the name of boosting security levels (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012). The Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2011 released a report, "Patterns of Misconduct: FBI intelligence violations from 2001-2008," which reveals that domestic political intelligence apparatus spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continues to systematically violate the rights of American citizens and legal residents. The report shows that the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations. The FBI issued some 200,000 requests and that almost 60 percent were for investigations of U.S. citizens and legal residents (www.pacificfreepress.com). The New York Times reported on October 20, 2011, that the FBI has collected information about religious, ethnic and national-origin characteristics of American communities (The New York Times, October 20, 2011). According to a Washington Post commentary dated January 14, 2012, the U.S. government can use "national security letters" to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens' finances, communications and associations, and order searches of everything from business documents to library records. The U.S. government can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012).

I don't even have right to choose where to live but I have to "beg for it from the local government or usually pay for it", because there's the ho-khau system in Vietnam, the same as the hu-kou system of China. It's called hu-kou in China and ho-khau in Vietnam. If I want to live in Hanoi, then I must pay for it or at least beg for it. If I'm living in Hanoi, then I must have Hanoi ho-khau (the same as Beijing hu-kou). If I don't have Hanoi ho-khau, then I'll face many serious troubles, ie my kids can't go to public schools, I can't register the ownership of my properties with the local government etc.

Comrade!
There was no "instruction". I said "humbly suggest". Please reread. My message was not about "free speech". My message was for make benefit glorious nation of China!
Forward to international justice!

As in the case of Wen Jiabao, how he talks different from what his family is doing, this is called the curse of power. There is no such thing as power limits itself, maybe one person out of a million would have that virtue, who even would not enter the power game from the beginning.
Even himself knows this, and that's why he haven't stopped calling for political reform. Although many don't doubt his sincerity wish for a better future, we do need to questioning how much it would gain, this call from inside the government itself.

Exactly because of this paradox, we see that during the last ten years, reform stagnated, and "State Owned Enterprises"---the money making machines of the royal families, gain more and more territory. The Hu-Wen government was once hoped to push forward reform at the beginning. But maybe it is because the two are not from one of those most powerful families so they could not push the reform. And because they are so powerless, they are more like pushovers and wouldn't dare change?

Then again, as even TE started to wish for Xi Jinping to change China, as many Chinese have done for thousands years: wishing for a powerful and good emperor to run the country so life would be better. The real solution is though, to not have an emperor but a democracy, whatever form it takes or however it is called.

Deng Xiaoping knows that, and said it would be for the future, which I think would be too late.

I agree.
The Communist Party of China is the rearguard of the Chinese hukuo working class, the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese nation. It is the core of leadership for the cause of Communism with Confuscion characteristics and represents the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese. The realisation of Communism is the highest ideal and ultimate goal of the Party. The Party must adhere to Marxism and Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of "Three Represents" of Jiang Zemin as its guiding ideology, while keeping on exploring the new horizon for the development of Marxist theories in its new practice, but as Deng (the wise Yoda man with the two cats feeling slippery stones while wading through shallow streams) said: Black Bo or White Wen, it doesn't really matter as long as the Great Chinese Leapfrog Forward (7% annual GDP growth is quite OK, no?) harmoniously carried out under the red banner of the Revoluting Spirit of Lei Feng (foundered on a sightseeing boat on Nanhu lake) is still alive in the hearts of many Chinese, Hukuo or Dipiao, Chongqing or Shanghai. The Chinese people are united and prospiring under the beneviolent goadance and coercive care of the CPC with abit less Cultural Revolutionary Maoist characteristics (now that Bo and his red songs are purged) but with scientific opening-up and reform outlook emancipating the mind, moving boldly ahead where no country has gone before, come hell or high water, smog or sandstorms, tainted milk or bursting melons, falling bridges or crashing trains, handsome war-lords or dead British lovers, London flats or Singaporean banks, red songs or Harvard crimson, ...
Long Live Chairman Mao and all his successo

" Why did evil CCP have money for the victims of earthquake, but US didn't have money for the victims of Katrina?"

I am not quite sure how to approach this question. Are you posing that question out of malice, or ignorance? Because it has absolutely no bearing on reality. That can be verified by a few minutes of honest search on the Internet. Or, is the Internet, too, controlled by those sinister characters you are so fond of adducing as the source of all evil in the world? If so, then why are you on a blog owned and controlled by evil Western powers? Just curious?

Wow! All totalitarians are the same, present the same kind of arguments and listen to none. So because someone murdered someone else in Chicago the Chinese (totalitarian) communist government is entitled to perpetuate itself in power. How silly, how childish and how sad.

In any political system, it is almost well nigh impossible to prevent the top leadership from gaining some perks (whether it is corruption is debatable).

For example, in governments as clean as Singapore and Hong Kong, there are also scandals revolving the top leadership. Lee Kuan Yew's family members were rumored to receive heavy discount from purchase of luxurious apartments while Donald Tsang got heavy discount in rent of a high-end apartment in Shenzhen after retirement.

The only difference is that in Singapore, anybody dares badmouthing Lee & his family will be sued for libel and he would definitely lose the case in court and pay $millions. In Hong Kong, the one who blows the whistle is more lucky though.

In U.S., Hillary Clinton could have a stockbroker that turned her portfolio investment from $1,000 into $100,000 in merely 10 months (I wish her stockborker can work for me) when her husband was merely the attorney general in Arkansas.

I guess as long as you are in power, you or your family will get many perks which in many circumstances that you don't even realize it.